


Harry and the Impossible Motorbike

by LadyHallen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Ancient Runes, Bullshitting ancient runes, Don't repost, Gen, One-Shot, Sirius Black's untimely demise that pissed me off, do not copy to another site, inventions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26741572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyHallen/pseuds/LadyHallen
Summary: Sirius Black was a genius. He could have changed the world with his smarts and his money. If only he wasn't imprisoned in Azkaban.After the war, Harry finds out belatedlyexactlyhow smart Sirius had been.
Relationships: Fleur Delacour/Bill Weasley, Harry Potter & Bill Weasley, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Sirius Black & Harry Potter
Comments: 19
Kudos: 250





	Harry and the Impossible Motorbike

Everything started because Harry hated magical transportation.

Driving Muggle, while slower than brooms, was more comfortable and Harry often took out the motorbike from the shed.

He fiddled with it, tinkered, and learned its insides and the charms that made it function. His respect for his godfather grew as he started to understand how the motorbike worked.

There were cushioning charms - because not even padded leather can be comfortable after a while – steadying runes – which sort of explained how the motorbike could survive Hagrid sitting on it and a number of other runic layers he found etched at the bottom of the engine that somehow made it run on magic, not gasoline.

The charm to make it fly, however, took the cake. It had triple layers, three runes that he’s sure would explode when put together – but didn’t, and a hexagram locking that kept people from figuring it out too easily. He was pretty sure there were five other layers hidden under the hexagram locking and he practically salivated over it for a month.

Sirius Black was, officially, a genius. If he hadn’t been imprisoned in Azkaban, he would have changed the Wizarding World, what with his money and his brain.

Harry spared just one moment of regret over that fact – because if he spared more than that, he’d be roaring drunk – and got a crash course on Ancient Runes.

This meant cooking Bill Weasley and his family lunch and then allowing the children to run around the garden while Harry and Bill immersed themselves in the Runes. Fleur baked dessert and shooed them from the kitchen. They then left after dinner.

Rinse, repeat every day thereafter.

After all, Gringotts Bank human employees were all fired in the aftermath of the war (and Harry’s escape on dragon back), Bill struggled to find work while tainted by werewolf infection and juggling a pregnant wife. Harry’s offer of two out of three meals a day for Ancient Runes tutoring had been godsent. It left them with lesser expenses and a broader range of options.

“Of course,” Harry had eventually mentioned when he realized what he’d inadvertently done. “You can always go to the Burrow for Breakfast. That way, you don’t have to buy any groceries at all. You’ll just have to deal with everything else.”

Bill had given him the serious look and said, “Shut up, Harry. Tell me what this Rune can do in conjunction with Sowilo.”

Harry smirked and counted it as a win.

It took three months of tutoring before Harry felt confident enough to open the hexagram locking and peer at what was underneath.

And found a veritable gold mine.

.

* * *

.

“What the hell?”

Harry’s shout of alarm drifted through the house and straight to where Fleur had commandeered Harry’s kitchen, almost driving his house-elf to tears.

The wizard in question stomped down, a scowl on his face and an envelope of parchment in one hand. He looked like he hadn’t slept the entire night.

“Bill, _have you seen this_???” Harry demanded. “What the fuck even? That. That! That Genius!”

Harry said the word genius like an insult. It was just another one of Harry’s many talents. Bill held out a hand expectantly. Harry scowled at the papers in his hand like they did in him a grave injustice. Then he handed them over while flopping down on the couch dramatically.

Bill ignored him and read what Harry uncovered under the hexagram locking.

There was a cluster set for floatation and another cluster set for mobility. What mocked Bill was the linking tri-rune that connected the two clusters and insured that nothing would explode under everything else.

It was a composite rune, something from an entirely different Rune set that Bill wanted to bang his head on the wall. Two different Rune sets aren’t supposed to work together. The Elder Futhark Rune set meant something different from the Younger Futhark. The Anglo-Saxon Futhorc was something else entirely. That they just looked similar didn’t mean they worked well.

“Is he shitting with me?” Bill demanded. Harry had buried his head under a pillow and his shoulders were shaking. He would be concerned that Harry was crying but he knew that Harry was laughing his head off. “Who the fuck thought to conjunct two different rune sets to stop two very volatile cluster sets from exploding?”

“Merlin’s pants,” Harry gasped, sounding like a dying animal. “Jeez. Imagine spending three nights unlocking Sirius’s hexagram locking – because he was a bastard – and finding _that_ staring at you.”

“Damnit, I need a drink,” Bill cursed, almost throwing the parchment on the table. After the initial adrenaline of terror had faded, his amusement was slowly waking up. Meanwhile, he felt weak with relief that they wouldn’t explode.

“Sirius Black,” Harry announced from the couch. “Terrorizing from beyond the grave.”

Fleur handed him firewhisky and mugs with a sympathetic smile. It made Bill’s poor abused heart feel better.

.

* * *

.

Two shots later and a lot more food, Bill translated the cluster sets and slumped with shock.

“What’s he done now?” Harry asked.

It had become a standard question and a by-word for whenever they uncovered something shocking. That Sirius was dead meant nothing. He was still pranking people even dead.

Bill sighed. “He added a sub-cluster to compute for everything. It automatically makes the bike adjust for wind resistance, weight and velocity.”

Harry nodded. “Okay, that works?”

Bill poured himself a shot. “No, Harry. He put the sub-cluster in the tri-rune. _You’re not supposed to do that_.” He knocked it back and felt better.

.

* * *

.

At the end of it all, Harry read the summary of how the motorbike worked.

“Sirius, you idiot,” Harry said, reaching a certain epiphany. “He could have gone the simple route and just added the floatation and the mobility.”

Bill, long past shock and straight into pissed off, ignored Harry. Fleur, who still spent most of her time away from their rune project and didn’t know better, asked, “The tri-rune linking with the sub-cluster was unnecessary?”

Fleur, who only skimmed Ancient Runes, knew about the tri-rune locking. She had to, given that Bill _ranted_ to her about it for three hours.

“Oh, it was necessary for how the motorbike was,” Harry corrected. “It wouldn’t be necessary, however, if you just wanted to get from point A to point B. Adding _that_ …turned the motorbike into something of an aerial marvel.”

“He was preparing for war,” Fleur said, cutting straight into the heart of it.

Harry had never thought of it that way and was struck silent.

“Poor Sirius,” Bill sighed, apparently forgiving Sirius for ruining what he thought he knew about Ancient Runes. “He was robbed of a future.”

.

* * *

.

Hermione eventually heard about it and read their notes on it, taking turns to look at either Harry or Bill in incredulity. Harry sympathized with her keenly. He had felt everything she’d been feeling _three weeks ago_.

“He’s insane,” Hermione said. She sounded shell-shocked. “There is no way in the world this is supposed to work.”

“Except it did,” Bill put in, cradling his tea. It smelled distinctly un-tea-like. Bill had run out of shits to give days ago. He’d accepted that the greatest genius of his time had wasted his brain in Azkaban and died prematurely. That didn’t mean he was happy about it.

“That motorbike can ride through a hurricane and come out on top,” Hermione whined. “Why. Why?”

All three of them shared the same thought. Why did such an injustice happen and now that they knew about it, what were they supposed to do about it?

The answer came from Ron.

Ron, who had gone into George’s jokeshop to pull out his brothers head from a cauldron of firewhiskey and just stuck around to help and became an unofficial partner in the shop. Ron, in charge of everything else in the jokeshop while George invented, took one look at their faces and laughed.

“Talk to George,” he said. “Sirius gave us something with that insane Rune Configuration. Let’s not waste it on a bike. Let’s give it to George.”

No one else could do anything about it, except George Weasley.

.

* * *

.

Because Harry didn’t actually want George (or anyone else within a thirty mile radius) to die, he renovated the attic of Grimmauld Place, expanded it (thanks Hermione), and assigned a house-elf to watch out for George’s health and imminent explosions and death.

A month later, the mobile flying houses were introduced into the market.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think I'll be adding to this, but I welcome anyone who wants to! PM me, and we'll talk.


End file.
